


Retrace

by pinebluffvariant



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M, Season/Series 10, The X-Files Revival
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 07:15:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,567
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5447870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinebluffvariant/pseuds/pinebluffvariant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Retrace your steps, retrace your thoughts, all the way back to the start.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Retrace

_Click-click-click-click-click-click–_

Scully’s heels strike familiar floors once again as she races down the fourth floor hallway toward the AD’s office. She beats the rhythm back into her life like this, through heel strikes and movement. She runs away, she runs toward, she runs alongside. It turns out she is early to the briefing. Her first since her reinstatement. Their first, since they said yes to walking into unknown territory. She stops briefly outside the door and inhales slowly, exhales loudly through her mouth. Listens for the breath. Feels for the floor under her feet. Walks in.

She is the first one there. Skinner has stepped out for coffee. The room hums with air conditioning. She sits down in a chair at the conference table, furthest from the door. A new leader’s portrait hangs, authoritarian, above the door in the office where she received commendations and warnings, where she lied for Mulder and herself, where she on occasion found her mind wandering to places it shouldn’t have gone. 

_He starts with a hand under the table, using a file as an excuse to lean in. He runs his fingers all the way up to the top of my thigh highs, then inward. “I think Agent Scully is misreading this figure,” he says casually to the room and turns to me, narrowing the space between us, and points with a fingertip at a graph. His fingers stroke my thigh while I watch, enraptured, his soft hand tracing the upward curve of some statistic. The movement whispers on my skin. I’m pulsing. I slouch forward and lift my hips minutely, pretending to shift in my seat, and he presses a knuckle firmly into my clit-_

She lets out her breath and tries very hard to keep her heartbeat under control. This isn’t who they are anymore. She can't just surrender to her longing and her fantasy, although the ghosts of years of frustration and release resonate through this building. She’s achieved some measure of success at keeping herself whole and together, by running from their event horizon, speeding up and up and up until her skin burned and her ears rang and she feels catharsis and pain and destruction all at once. Then she cools down and goes back to work. That is how it’s going to be now. Distance, safety five paces and two suits apart. She knows herself when she’s dressed like this, her shoulder holster chafing against her ribs. She also knows that they will be back in each other’s orbits in no time. 

Her memory flashes on circling him while he sat in his office chair downstairs, of standing behind him and leaning over, simply breathing in time with him, letting him feel the humid life of her breath, the two of them perfectly silent together. She was pregnant with their child. He would be gone, days later. Her nipples stiffen at the thought of his low, throaty voice.

The door opens, and she snaps to attention. 

Mulder walks in, his eyes tracing the same arc hers had a minute ago: The portrait, the rug, the table, and up, up, all the way up her legs, crossed at the ankle in her tailored slacks and black stilettos. The late afternoon light plays over his features, all shadow and strobe. He stops in the middle of the room, stone-like, and just stares at her. His hands are curled at his sides; he’s like David with that mouth and those unreadable eyes. His suit is pale gray, brand new of course, and the wool is so fine it shimmers like silk. A cast of steel surrounds his warm body, encased in starched cotton and red silk looped around his neck, a medal and a commendation saying, “Welcome home, soldier.”

He exhales slowly, nostrils flaring, and tips his head up like he’s fighting a nosebleed. He is razor sharp and tender, and it’s wondrous: the knife edge of his sideburns runs parallel to the precision collar of his shirt, corded muscle climbing up the arc of his throat. She feels like she is seeing him for the very first time.

The scrape of Italian leather soles against the industrial rug penetrates Scully’s trance, and he is already only two steps away from her when she comes to completely. She knew this would happen, she knew- she bends at the waist and reaches out, and as his legs make one final stride she grips him by the knees and runs her hands, tense and possessive, all over him. The wool rustles under her palms, a little callused from free weights, and she wastes no time sliding, grabbing her way up the backs of his thighs, feeling the muscles twitch. 

It’s the trembling in his knees that cues her onto what’s going on: her mouth is inches away from his wool-sheathed cock, and he’s noticed. She feels the beat in her head travel down, contracting in her throat. Heat pools in the deepest part of her and thuds, thuds suddenly and violently in her clit.

When she looks up at him it’s not without satisfaction: Where he was razor-like, just a moment ago, he is now flowing water, something deep and wild pouring out of his eyes when they meet hers. The heat coming off both of them breaks her out in a cold sweat. She smiles when he puts his hands on her shoulders and reaches for his belt without thinking about it. It’s been like this with them before, all instinct and no thought, and right now her head spins and she’s fumbling with a zipper whose zzzzzzzzt comes into perfect focus just as she feels a rush of wet release from her body, urging her on, don’t think, this is good, don’t think. 

He pulls her to her feet and looms over her, her hand snaking into his pants and palming his cock gently, this part of him she misses so much she is throbbing freely and pushing her ass back into his waiting hands. And oh, his mouth is velvet and molten glass on hers, teeth and tongues colliding. His breath on her face is taking from her, sucking her dry, but giving back in kind. He twitches in her hand and sucks her tongue into his mouth, and she whimpers uncontrollably, the desperate thudding between her legs accelerating with each lick and moan from his mouth. This is going to hurt, she thinks, strangely drunk with power, and leaves his cock to tug roughly at his hair. Her hips buck up into his, like she is trying to ignite a spark between them. The ten fingers she will do anything for travel down her body, kneading and stroking. Oh, is all that appears before her when he cups her through her trousers, do you feel it? How wet?

The door opens; she is shocked into awareness. Her hands are gripping the arms of the chair, and it feels like Mulder's old couch underneath her palms, of god. But she hasn't moved. The rabbit beat of her heart is going to break through her chest, she knows it. _Oh, god, oh, god, none of that, none of it happened._ She dives for her briefcase on the floor: a ruse, a moment to collect herself.

For an instant, a whisper of the mushroom cave appears before her eyes. _What the hell was that?_ It was the power that exists between them. She knows this. It caught her by surprise. She knows he’ll know what she was thinking about. If she looks into his eyes now she knows she will see it: the pull of the ocean, wild and deafening, a threat to her sanity. Who is she kidding. She lost that long ago.

“Agents,” says Skinner as he strides in, “welcome back.”

Mulder’s concerned gaze beams at her from where he still stands in the middle of the room. The waves crash over her and inch her ever closer to his side. He shakes hands with Skinner, says “thank you, sir,” in that serious, studious, intelligent, focused, devastating voice Scully never thought she would hear again, not after the years of silence and anger. She swallows back the lump in her throat, takes a deep breath and straightens up, gets out of her seat to shake Skinner’s hand, then Mulder’s. His palm burns hers, energy flowing between them. Her heart slows down. She pays no attention to the slow trickle, residual from her daydream, in her core.

They sit in the two arm chairs, across from Skinner. She remembers, suddenly, the moment they both realized their shared hallucination had brought them here into this room. What saved them, then and now, was being together. The tether is the reason they are here, and not forgotten piles of bones in the belly of a long-forgotten hill. She looks over at Mulder, sharp profile and brow set, ready to fight, and knows that she will not stop at anything, at anyone, she’ll fight for him, again and again. For them.

His eyes meet hers. “Hey,” he mouths. “Hi,” her lips say back.

“Let’s begin,” Skinner’s voice booms. They nod at each other. They look ahead, through Skinner, through the thickness of life and mistakes and triumph, a straight line from the past into the unknown. Scully hears waves. They have come to take her out to sea. She is ready.


End file.
